Legal Immigrants Face Years of Delays
Posted on June 18, 2007
The Washington Post reports on the shocking backlog at the U.S. Immigration Service. Hundreds of thousands of immigrants who have applied legally for citizenship have been stuck in limbo for years because of the lack of personnel, computers and funding to carry out required background checks.
Since 2005, the backlog of legal U.S. immigrants whose applications for naturalization and other benefits are stuck on hold awaiting FBI name checks has doubled to 329,160, prompting a flood of lawsuits in federal courts, bureaucratic finger-pointing in Washington and tough scrutiny by 2008 presidential candidates.The article cites several specific cases of of persons who have had their lives put on hold for years, even though they have been long-time U.S. residents with jobs and stable backgrounds. These people applied legally to come to this country and deserve to have their cases decided before we even begin to think about dealing with those that broke the law to come to the U.S. The U.S. immigration system is broken: it has outdated computers and insufficient personnel to do an overwhelming job. It must be fixed before any immigration legislation is considered.At a time when Congress is intensely focused on border security, the growing backlog is one of the most visible signs of the U.S. immigration system's breakdown, current and former government officials said.
Unexplained delays in determining whether longtime residents pose a threat promise neither justice to the applicants nor added security to the country, they said. They blame bureaucratic mismanagement and poor coordination at the FBI and the immigration service, and the inefficient methods of screening files for genuine security threats.
In his annual report to Congress last week, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) ombudsman Prakash I. Khatri called the backlog of FBI name checks "unacceptable from the standpoint of national security and immigration benefits processing."
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Seong Ho Kang, 40, a computer engineer from South Korea who lives in Centreville, has waited for more than a year for his FBI check, possibly because the bureau since 2001 has intensified the scrutiny of immigrants with high-technology backgrounds. In frustration, Kang submitted a Freedom of Information Act request for any records the FBI might have on him. The bureau promptly replied that it had none. "If they can tell that to me, why can't they tell it to immigration?" Kang asked.